 "How popular is experimental cinema in India?")
Though experimental cinema remains niche compared to mainstream film but is growing in popularity, particularly among cinephiles, film students, and independent producers who appreciate its unconventional narrative and artistic expression. Like the way, Sister Midnight is a 2025 experimental black comedy-drama was hugely appreciated among critics. It’s about a newlywed woman’s transformation in a cramped Mumbai home, marked by surreal imagery and unconventional storytelling. Starring Radhika Apte, the film features minimal dialogue, relying heavily on striking visuals and cinematography to explore themes of societal control and a woman’s awakening to her darker impulses.
Mahishaa, an experimental filmmaker from Bengaluru known for his experimental, counter-culture narratives that explore caste, gender, and masculinity in urban India says on the age group of audiences interested in experimental cinema, “I think a lot of younger folks, primarily, like a lot of college students. More than age group, I think most of them are artists themselves. Maybe in a different form of art practice. They may not be filmmakers, but design students or design people as well. You know, zine makers or something like that. So, it’s quite interesting to see other people who are into different forms of art coming here.”
WATCH the trailer of Sister Midnight here:
Challenges of experimental cinema
Not just experimental cinema, cinema itself as a career option is a bit of a contradiction. Mahishaa who was recently seen at the Emami Art Experimental Film Festival 2025 held in Kolkata, explains, especially when you are experimental filmmakers, you do have to have another source of income because there is no primary way of making a film, you don’t have that kind of an ecosystem yet.
Choosing experimental cinema making as a career option where you can also sustain yourself is really hard. Mahishaa adds, “That’s why you can see the kind of, even within the people who are here, the films being presented, and the people who are attending, people who can go to these universities and design schools are coming from a very well-off background. I think the one thing I would like to see, as a mid-career filmmaker myself, would be more inclusion, more people from different backgrounds. I think we’ll only have much more interesting stories to tell.”
Rushnan Jaleel another young experimental filmmaker spotted at the Emami Art Experimental Film Festival 2025 says, “I think it’s thanks to little festivals like Experimenta, Emami, there is a festival in Mumbai called 16mm festival, that we are getting more visibility. But it’s still not quite there, but hopefully over time we will be able to create this niche.”
EAEFF is a platform dedicated to curating and building discourses around alternative and experimental practices. Since its formative edition, EAEFF has emerged as a significant platform for curatorial engagements and critical interventions, facilitating a global community of filmmakers, artists, scholars and curators engaged in alternative practices in moving image making.
The main challenge for experimental cinema is simply connecting with viewers and trying to convince them that this mode of filmmaking is worth engaging with. Rushnan says, “It’s so amateur sometimes, it’s so solitary sometimes, it kind of goes against people’s preconceptions of what film generally is. Film is supposed to be collaborative, it’s supposed to be narrative and our stuff is not those things, but it can kind of move away from those things.
Ushmita Sahu, Director, Emami Art & EAEFF talking behind the idea of Emami Art Experimental Film Festival says, “It came from a restlessness I’ve always felt with the way moving images are usually consumed. Mainstream films, of course, dominate the cultural landscape, but I knew there was another kind of films being made whether artists moving images, video art or experimental films — fragile, fragmented, often difficult — that rarely found the space it deserved.”
Film festivals supporting experimental cinema
While the Indian market heavily favours mainstream commercial cinema because of the huge popularity of Bollywood fans in India. For most audiences in India, it is more about the star and less about the craft. But with the exposure given by OTT and certain film festivals like MAMI, IFFI and now EAEFF which just completed it’s fourth edition, things are getting better.
Ushmita Sahu says, “Starting EAEFF was really about creating that space. A place where we don’t ask films to entertain or to fit a formula, but instead allow them to challenge us, to slow us down, to open questions rather than provide answers. It was a leap of faith in many ways — trusting that audiences here would be willing to embrace this, and that artists would respond to the seriousness of the platform.”
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